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Religion and politics

• Mark Mardell
• 19 Jul 07, 02:24 PM

The view is fantastic. What a place to take an early evening glass of tea. The sprawling tea room is set on a natural balcony overlooking the fawn peaks of the Cudi mountains (pronounced like "Judy") spreading into the distance, touched by a golden evening light. We're in the Kurdish town of Sirnak, which has been made gay by a profusion of election bunting spread across the main crossroads.

The men in the open-air tea room seem to be grouped strictly, by age and dress. At one table men in their forties, wearing white shirts and dark suit-trousers. They all have small neat moustaches. At another, older men, wizened and mostly bearded, wear looser-fitting clothes. We are invited to sit down and take a glass of tea with a group of men in their sixties. They wear crisp, careful, ironed white shirts, dark waistcoats and large elongated flat caps. They have big, bushy moustaches. I never get round to asking what they do, but they have an air of mild prosperity, small businessmen or shopkeepers.

It's all very relaxing, the click of worry beads in their large hands, the scent of Turkish tobacco, aromatic rather than choking in the open air, a low murmur of conversation in Kurdish. The men are nearly all smoking roll-ups of pale local tobacco through Noel Coward style black cigarette holders. Many of them keep their tobacco in large silver cases - one, I notice, has a rather incongruous marijuana-leaf embossed on the front. There is rather a lot I want to understand but this is a gentle, translated conversation, not an interview with a politician, so I am happy to go with the flow rather than relentlessly herd the talk in one direction. I do expect to hear a fair amount on the Kurdish question, but instead we end up talking about the central issue in the elections: religion and politics.

First I do ask about the troop build-up. One man says there has been a lot of activity, another says not more than normal. They seem to agree that there will be no invasion unless there is a big terrorist attack. If that happens, then probably something will be done. I sip the tea. The men tell me they call it "smugglers tea"… it's from Syria. All the sweeter, I say.

One man seems to be a spokesman for the group despite not wearing the team uniform. No cap or moustache and he's wearing a light-weight suit jacket, so perhaps he's something of a free-thinker, or perhaps it's the modern day dress of a Kemalist. He is attacking the ruling party, the which I've described below as mildly Islamic. "They are deceiving people. It is wrong to use religion like that. The nation should come first in politics. Religion is between each man and Allah."

The statue of Ataturk at our backs should be beaming at such sentiments. But the founder of modern Turkey, clutching a book of his speeches, is as stern as ever. His revolution in the 1920s and 30s was quite astonishing. He transformed the tattered remains of the Ottoman empire into a modern nation state and then dragged it, with remarkably little screaming, into the West's version of the 20th Century. He outlawed traditional dress, banned the Arabic script, introduced universal education and a legal system based on the Swiss code, praised the emancipation of women, and shoved religion right out of politics. Here he is revered by many as a secular saint.

Although no-one would dare to do so here, there is much one could mock about Ataturk. Except he was so extraordinarily successful. He balanced on the high wire of history and everything tells you he should have fallen off, that his revolution should have ended in failure and the triumph of conservatism. But it didn't. He stayed on the wire, won, and it worked.

Indeed secularism, the doctrine that religion has no place in politics, has become in itself almost untouchable, holy writ. That is why it filled some with such horror that their country might elect a president whose wife wears a headscarf.

It is his legacy that some fear the AK, a religious party, is trying to unravel, as several comments to an earlier post point out. Thanks for so many interesting remarks. Ayse Sarici, I think that is the first time someone has made a nice comment on the way I look for about 20 years. And you are right that the proximate cause of the election was parliament not agreeing on a presidential candidate - but I think the e-coup coloured and pre-ordained that failure. Fascinating analysis from Ronald Kramer.

Some questions for Mehmet Kara and Cagatay Ertan: what do you mean by secularism under threat? When people talk about the rise of political Islam do we in Western Europe mean the same as you in Turkey? Cagatay points out that the president blocked some "fundamentalist interventions". True the AK wanted to allow state money to go to Koranic schools. They wanted women to be able to wear the headscarf in universities and libraries. But in Britain such things would be seen as fairly normal and legitimate expressions of religion: church schools (and Islamic and Jewish ones) are indeed funded by the state in Britain. France is a determinedly secular state, but would Mrs Sarkozy be banned from the Elysee Palace if she wore a Christian cross around her neck? So are you really worried about an increase in religious sentiment, rather than the rise of fundamentalism, or political Islam? Both are legitimate concerns to secularists but they are not the same thing. Or are you saying that there is no difference?

Is there real fundamentalism in Turkey?

I'm writing now in the city of Cizre. There are many women wearing the full chador-type veil, with a white piece of cloth across the mouth. People who've been here before tell me this would have been unthinkable five years ago. So something is changing: but how political is it? Every time I try to pin down an example of "fundamentalism" in Turkey it vanishes, leaving nothing but the headscarf issue behind. Councils that ban alcohol? I've heard the story, but you tell me where, I can't find it. But will Turkey one day go the way of Iran, or Afghanistan under the Taliban? My waters tell me it's unlikely, but maybe I would have had a gut instinct in Kabul in the 1950s or Tehran in the 60s that would have been wrong. And Gul Berna Ozan: is there such a thing as Christian Capitalism or Islamic Capitalism? Some say that the AK party is all about a new mixture, Islamic Calvanism, which is explored in .

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Talk of invasion

• Mark Mardell
• 19 Jul 07, 01:05 AM

For the moment it's Turkish tankers not Turkish tanks that are lining up at the border with Iraq.

A long line of oil and petrol tankers snakes along the Silk Road, through parched fields, towards the mountains and the border crossing at Habur. The drivers are incredibly patient, sitting on little stools outside their vast vehicles in the burning heat and waiting for the boys to come along on rickety tricycles to sell them cold drinks or a glass from the trays of tea. "We are already starving," grumbles one man. "If they invade we will die."

Hang on. Invade Iraq? Hasn't someone already thought of that?

But this is a Turkish threat, and an American fear. The Iraqi foreign minister claims that 140,000 Turkish troops are massing on the border. Many Turkish generals think the government should go in, and so do senior politicians in the main opposition party. The logic is easy. This is Turkey's Kurdish region, where a civil war, a struggle against terrorism, a fight for freedom... you choose the label you wish, but whatever you call it, it's been going on for more than 20 years. Two Turkish soldiers were killed just days ago, by Kurdish fighters.

Plain weird

But the invasion of Iraq changed everything. Almost certainly the most stable part of that country is the Kurdish region right across the border from Turkey. It is not, of course, independent, but has the sort of autonomy many Turkish Kurds can only dream about. Many see the Kurds as the Americans' most important and most loyal allies within Iraq. The Turkish military says the Kurdish guerrillas - the PKK, who have long holed up in the mountains - now operate with impunity from within Iraq itself. The Turkish military see the existence of Kurdistan in Iraq as both an immediate strategic threat and a political one.

The scenery here is entrancing, dramatic and just plain weird. A vast panorama of fawn mountains gives way to a wide river delta. Black shale forms large hillocks like scrunched up velvet. The evening sun light fills the landscape with a golden glow. Geological formations like so many giant axe heads stick out sheer from the rock face. Every few miles there might be a sign of life. A low concrete building with a roof of dried branches, complete with leaves. A little girl pushing a wheel barrow across the road. A checkpoint. The young gendarmes are polite but look hard and don't smile. Reminders that this is a zone of conflict are everywhere.

In the magical landscape, one building stands out: a pagoda atop a hill. Not Shangri La, but the home of the Turkish special forces. But it's just one of many signs of the military presence. Eight-floor barracks houses with their own mosque attached perch on hill tops, behind barbed wire. Tanks poke their guns out from canvas awnings overlooking the Tigris. Civilian minibuses carry soldiers in and out of the area, a miniature armoured car leading the convoy. In fairness, and with the wisdom of driving around for a day, it's a lot less in your face than the British presence used to be in Northern Ireland.

Election issue

But 140,000 troops? It's safe to say that last month did see a fairly large influx of men and machinery but they are now in the military zone where we are not allowed to go.

One local who knows the area well thinks perhaps there are now 60,000 men massed here. But guessing at numbers is fairly pointless. What is certainly the case is that this has been ramped up as an election issue. A stick to beat the ruling AK party with, as too scared to stand up for Turkish interests, too craven to defy the Americans, unwilling to pursue and destroy the terrorists.

I'm not exactly a military expert, but the idea of a land invasion seems fanciful. Surely a few special forces, or air strikes or artillery barrages would do the job better, if there is a job to be done? But talk of invasion does worry the Americans. Not just because it would destabilise the one region of Iraq that could be called almost stable, but because their latest "surge" in Baghdad relies on Kurdish fighters. If these felt their homeland was threatened they might go home, forgetting to drop their American weapons on the way, and leave the surge, well... distinctly un-surgey.

Frightened Americans may be just what the Turks want. Of course, given the fairly fevered election campaign I'm not suggesting any collusion between the government, opposition and the army but it might suit all their interests if the Americans were to be forced to watch more carefully what the Turkish Kurds are getting up to in Iraq. But no amount of slaughter will change the fact that a nearly independent Kurdistan on Turkey's border is a challenge to all involved.

You've made many interesting comments on what I see as the main election issue... I will reply later with some more thoughts of my own.

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